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South Sudan’s government and rebels finally began talks to end weeks of bloodletting yesterday
after days of delay. The United States, meanwhile, ordered out more of its embassy staff.

However, there was no face-to-face meeting, and fighting was reported near the key town of Bor,
suggesting that a halt to clashes between President Salva Kiir’s SPLA forces and rebels loyal to
former vice president Riek Machar still is a long way off.

Neighboring countries fear that the fighting, which quickly spread from the capital, Juba, last
month along ethnic faultlines, could destabilize east Africa, and the regional IGAD grouping is
mediating the peace talks in Ethiopia.

The talks had been scheduled to begin in Addis Ababa on Wednesday and began slowly
yesterday.

Meanwhile, the SPLA said its troops were fighting rebels 14 miles south of rebel-controlled Bor,
the capital of the vast Jonglei state and site of an ethnic massacre in 1991.

Bor, 118 miles north of Juba, has changed hands three times since the unrest began.

More than a thousand people have been killed and 200,000 driven from their homes in three weeks
of fighting that has raised the specter of a civil war pitting Kiir’s ethnic Dinkas against Machar’s
Nuer.

The United States has been withdrawing nonessential embassy staff since mid-December and said
yesterday that it is evacuating more.

It also urged all American citizens to leave South Sudan. The country, the size of France, is
estimated to hold the third-largest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is desperately poor
and short of infrastructure.

“We are not suspending our operations. We are just minimizing our presence,” said Susan Page,
the U.S. ambassador.

More than 440 U.S. officials and private citizens have been evacuated on charter flights and
military aircraft, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in Washington. The United States
also has flown out 750 citizens of 27 other countries.

The Pentagon sent two KC-130 aircraft to pick up about 20 U.S. diplomatic personnel from the
embassy in Juba, said Army Col. Steve Warren.